Still Dead

Note: This post is part of our League Symposium on Guns In America. You can read the introductory post for the Symposium here. To see a list of all posts in the Symposium so far, click here.

–WARNING: This post contains graphic content.–

Walt and I were sitting in the bleachers of the football field of my middle school. What we were doing there, I don’t know. I just knew I was so happy to see him. Ecstatic, even. Enough so that I didn’t notice the peculiarities. Why did he have a rifle in his hand? Why were the bleachers on the wrong side of the field? When did he grow that goatee? Not that I cared. I was talking to my best friend that I’d thought… something had happened to. He mocked me for my exuberant reaction to seeing him. But who cared? That I was talking to him again, and that I embraced him, was enough to make me overlook the fact that I was dreaming and he was, in fact, still dead.

We were talking about my love life. Just as we had always done. Not long before that, my then-girlfriend Libby had exposed the depths of her mental illness. Or her desire to play that part for whatever reason. While she fell apart, locked in my closet and screaming at me, the guilt I felt at our impending breakup was replaced by indifference.

Walt was unmoved by my situation. I wouldn’t even be here, he explained, if I’d never left Julie. I was wondering when he would bring that up. Walt, Julie, and I were the three musketeers. We all got along so seemlessly, and were so close never even seemed to worry about being a third wheel. Which he wasn’t. He was going to be the godfather of our children. He had already disappeared – died, wasn’t it? No, he’s right here! – by the time Julie and I went our separate ways. Had he been around a little bit longer, the two of them could have happened. It’d been obvious that he wanted it to. There was no doubt that Julie was going to come up, in this conversation at the mirror image of my middle school football field.

Sitting together on the bleachers, I tried to explain to him that sometimes things don’t work out like you expect them to. That when I was with her, I wanted to spend the rest of my life with her. I didn’t know yet that it wasn’t meant to be. If it had meant that he wouldn’t have… gone away… maybe I would have stepped aside. But I just didn’t know. His anger at the situation was palatable. I couldn’t be angry at him for going away. I missed him too much. I did want him to stop being so mad.

He asked why I couldn’t be more accepting of Libby’s eccentricities. That depression and mental illness demanded support. Would I have ditched him if he’d told me how unhappy he was? This jolted me back to flashes of reality. The brief realization that I was talking to a dead man. I explained that ever since… something… I couldn’t remember what, I couldn’t invest in that kind of thing anymore. Anything remotely suicidal. I related the story of my ex-roommate Dennis and how he was expressing suicidal thoughts one night to anyone who would listen. My friends scrambled to help in any way they could. I just sat there at my computer. Paralyzed. Stubbornly refusing to engage.

This just made Walt angrier. Standing now, he looked down at me contemptuously. Who the fuck was I to wash my hands of someone in need? What kind of friend was I? What kind of man was I?

I rose to meet him. I told him that I couldn’t invest in someone who would, when things weren’t going their way, lock themselves in a closet. Then, I saw him grip the rifle. Reality came tumbling forward. The memory of the phone call. The funeral. The gravestone. Walter Aaron Zsaszich, 1979-2000. I looked at Walt and said that I couldn’t invest in someone who would take a rifle to their head.

Walt was yelling at me after that. He was telling me how I had abandoned him when he needed me. If I hadn’t, he’d be alive. If I’d tried harder, he’d be alive. If I’d ceded Julie and he’d found love, he’d be alive. If I had been a friend to him at all, he’d be alive. It was at this point that he lifted the rifle, aimed it at his head, and pulled the trigger. He didn’t die. What was left of his face just kept screaming at me. I remember that he shot himself over and over again in front of me while all I could do was sob. By the time I woke up, three quarters of his face was gone and his jaw was just hanging there.

That wasn’t the first time I’d had the graphic part of that dream. For a few years after, they seemed to come on an annual basis around the anniversary of his death. The conversation always differed, but the setting and the conclusion were always the same. The first time I had that dream, a couple weeks after his funeral, it was the first step in my coming to terms with what had happened. Julie and I had called him on Thursday about hanging out on Friday. We didn’t hear back. On Friday, we thought about calling him again but decided not to. He’d been going through a bit of a loner phase. Saturday, we reconsidered. I left a message on his cell. His step-father called me back. On Friday Night he had a bad trip. He walked out into the woods, and he shot himself.

As the dreams indicate, there are a lot of things I wonder about. Had he been out with us, no drug trip and no suicide. He’d be alive today. Probably. Had he not accepted some bad advice from Julie and myself, he wouldn’t have been in that bad place. He’d be alive today. Maybe. Had he not had that gun, he’d be alive today. Maybe. Had he not had that gun, he’d be alive today. Probably. Had he not had that gun, he’d be alive today. Yeah.

Walt’s death was a confluence of events. He wasn’t a depressive or suicidal person by nature, as near as we could tell. There was, however, a certain… darkness… about him at times. That was the case of a lot of people I knew. Dennis far moreso than Walt. But Dennis is alive. No drugs, no gun. Libby was darker and more disturbed than both of them combined. As far as I know, she’s still alive. Drugs, but no gun. When I think of the a missing component that most likely would have saved Walt’s life, the absence of a gun would be it. The bad place he was emotionally would have eventually been moved past. The drug trip would have ended (he wasn’t a regular user). It was the gun that made it permanent.

It’s been over ten years since this happened and I still don’t know what lessons to draw from it. I remain of the belief that it was not the position of the government to keep his gun from him. Or his family’s gun, it turned out. I am sure that whatever I went through, his parents and the owners of the gun have gone through more. I didn’t see it coming. Should they have? In the end, it is something that just is. Or was. He left a lot of broken things behind. I won’t say that I will totally ever heal. But I’m mended, at least, while he’s still dead.

24 Responses

I thought of three people reading this. One was K. a friend and someone who used to work for me when i worked at shelter for street kids. I knew her husband and their best friend also since i hired them all. I knew K was odd but we all were in our own way. One day a couple years after we had all stopped working at the shelter she hanged herself. She was deeply mentally ill, which i never knew. She and her husband would never have a gun in the house but it obviously didn’t make any difference in her case. When we still all worked together two teens who we had known for a while both died by gunshot in “accidents” a few months apart. I put accident in quotes since there was uncertain whether the deaths were due to stupid adolescent accidents likely fuelled by drugs or impulsive suicides. It didn’t really matter, we had memorial services for them since their families didn’t. I don’t know how they got the guns, if they were legal or not. But if they didn’t have the guns, they wouldn’t have died when they did.

Such is life that the living must always wonder about the fates which have left us alive while so many of our loved ones are gone. Our lot is to always ask questions with no answer.

Eyes I dare not meet in dreams In death’s dream kingdom These do not appear: There, the eyes are Sunlight on a broken column There, is a tree swinging And voices are In the wind’s singing More distant and more solemn Than a fading star.

Let me be no nearer In death’s dream kingdom Let me also wear Such deliberate disguises Rat’s coat, crowskin, crossed staves In a field Behaving as the wind behaves No nearer —

Sorry to switch into functional mode so brusquely, but with this anecdote you’ve crystallized the essence of guns in America: in the hands of the righteous, guns can be a powerful tool for good: witness the Revolution. In the hands of the unrighteous, guns can catalyze evil: a man in Akihabara a few years ago drove his car into a crowd of people and killed a handful; American psychopaths get to use guns.

In the hands of the emotionally delicate or the agitated, or the angsty, or those in altered states of consciousness, guns can make permanent an evil that was never meant to be part of reality.

When we talk about guns, we tend to talk about rights, when really we ought to be talking about values.Report

Augghh… you actually have dreams like that? [Shivers] My lifepath has been blissfully free of suicides. Lost a friend to a motorcycle accident in hs, and that’s bad enough. Thanks for sharing your powerful and intimate story.

Some thoughts: Concerning guns and suicides, my understanding of it is that most, not all, suicide attempts are impulsive events. So just not having the means readily available can prevent a lot of them.

You said your friend was “tripping.” Do you literally mean on LSD or something? Because suicides as a result of psychedelics isn’t particularly common. There were even experiments in the ’50s and ’60s that suggested that use of psychedelics under controlled, therapeutic conditions was an almost miraculous curative. Sort of like hitting a reset button on your brain. But, you know, just say no and all that. Alcohol is a much more common trigger chemical for suicide.

When I hear people calling for increased mental health services as a response to Sandy Hook events, I’m reminded of the maxim that the first symptom in something like 80% of the cases of heart disease is cardiac arrest, which is usually fatal. Please don’t blame yourself. Yeah, there may have been signs that a trained professional could pick up on, but you’re not a trained professional. And it wasn’t because of anything you or your girlfriend did or didn’t do. Your friend had a serious chemical imbalance in his brain. It was inevitable.Report

“I’m reminded of the maxim that the first symptom in something like 80% of the cases of heart disease is cardiac arrest, which is usually fatal.”

Not really true if we’re counting highly-correlated comorbidities like hypertension, hyperlipidemia, obesity, diabetes, tachycardia, atrial fibrillation, etc. These people should expect cardiac events. Lifestyle is a huge predictor, but overhwhelmingly Americans choose to ignore that fact to such an extent that the medical profession has largely given up on a pushing a known cure for a well-understood disease and chosen instead to concentrate on developing “cheats” like blood-thinners and clotting antagonists that acknowledge our civilization’s unnatural, sedentary reality.Report

but overhwhelmingly Americans choose to ignore that fact to such an extent that the medical profession has largely given up on a pushing a known cure for a well-understood disease

It’s as much the medical industry though.

They want to sell blood thinners. They want to sell clotting antagonists. Those make money for drug companies.

They don’t really want people signing up for a fitness center, or stopping by the local primary care physician’s office for a checkup. They don’t want to pay out on the specialist referral to send you to a nutritionist. None of that will make money for the drug companies or the insurance/HMO.

On the last insurance plan I had, I couldn’t guarantee which of the 10 rent-a-docs I would actually see when I went to the clinic where my official “primary care physician” was a member. It took me 3 visits to get them to finally give the referral to a chiropractor to look at the underlying cause of some back pain (a shifted disc) rather than just giving me pain meds.

Societally, should we emphasize getting in shape more? Yes. But we need to remove the drug companies and to some extent the “don’t wanna pay for anything to support it” HMOs and Insurance Scam companies in order to get that to happen more.Report

Most of them don’t. The number I’ve been through that wanted to have nothing but minimal usage of services (as in, “one PCP visit a year to say all’s well and that’s it”) make your experience an outlier.Report

suicides as a result of psychedelics isn’t particularly common…Alcohol is a much more common trigger chemical for suicide.

In my understanding this is all true. But even those of us, like me, who support the legalization of drugs must concede that they can interact unpredictably with certain individuals’ biology or mental states. I have seen people become paranoid and aggressive under the influence of MDMA (behaviors that are decidedly NOT in the normal effects profile of this generally fairly-safe and predictable intoxicant; but on the other hand, neither of the people in whom I witnessed this effect were totally “normal”; but on the third hand, who is?)Report

Suicides tend to tall into a couple of categories, the spontaneous and the determined. Walt’s case was the former. I’m familiar with another case that was the latter. When it’s determined, having a good tool on hand doesn’t make that much of a difference. Honestly, even in spontaneous cases, if they’re recurring, eventually they’re going to have the impulse when something is handy even if a gun is not.Report

Not often. Most of them involve Walt. I guess it falls into the category of one of the big traumatizing events and so it festers in Dreamland.

His parents didn’t specify, and I didn’t ask, but I assume it was LSD for a couple of reasons. I don’t have difficulty believing it is rare. But I believe that’s a big part of what happened here. There was maybe alcohol involved, as well, though generally speaking he wasn’t a manic drunk or depressive drunk. Mostly just a philosophical one. I am inclined to believe that it took more than alcohol to peel back to whatever it was that he felt he urgently had to get away from.

I have my doubts that it was inevitable, though I am of the mind that – dreams and some dark thoughts notwithstanding – it really wasn’t foreseeable.Report

I sincerely hope most of your dreams are better than this, man. I feel like I want to respond further, to engage further, but it would either be too bland to be helpful or too personal to be appropriate here.

All I’ll say here is that the demon who came after you… Well, he comes after me too. And pretty much everyone else. He custom-builds his disguises. He comes at night, at a time he chooses. If you’re a Freudian, he lives in the superego, not the id. You can tell by virtue of the weapons he uses against you — guilt and anxiety. For me, understanding what’s going on in my unconscious at least takes some of the edge off of the attacks, afterwards. I hope that helps you too.Report

There is so much we don’t know how to deal with when it comes to mental health. Heck, there is so much we don’t know about adolescence and the hormone bath your brain takes for almost a decade.

Going back through my list of friends who are still dead, I’m noticing that two of them used chemicals and one of them used a car (we think… it could have been an accident… but he had a chemical attempt that failed under his belt).

It’s difficult to tell the difference between a kid who’s going through a loner phase and is trying to figure it out and a kid who is seriously bad off… but most of the people I know have a ghost, like this one, who haunts them.

Maybe it’s something that colors my perception, but of all the people I’ve known who committed suicide (& it’s a disturbing number, close to a dozen) only one used a gun.

Ironically (I think, is this ironic?), I saved a girl from committing suicide by gun.

I was 12, had just come home on my bike from a friends house (we lived out in the sticks, so you needed a bike at the very least to go see friends). My parents & my sister were gone, which wasn’t unusual, my folks trusted me home alone. As I pulled up to the driveway, I noticed a large land yacht (Cadillac, Bonneville, the make & model escapes me, I only remember it was a late 70’s vintage & garishly gold) parked on the side of the highway right at the edge of our yard. Which is odd, since this was a county highway, and parking on the side usually meant a breakdown, or some hippies trying to steal my moms Asparagus, either way,I chose to investigate.

As I pulled up alongside the car, I noticed the driver, a girl… a very pretty girl, at least, she would be, except for the pain twisting it… staring at the steering wheel like it held the Question to Life, the Universe, & Everything. Then I saw the gun – a revolver, long barrel, chrome, a Dirty Harry gun, the mouth of the barrel a cavern – propped against the steering wheel, pointed at her heart, both her thumbs hooked around the trigger. I didn’t grow up around guns, mom didn’t like them, & dad wasn’t a hunter, so never made an issue of it. So seeing that gun was certainly something new to me.

I asked her if she was OK, if I could do anything for her. She never looked up at me, her eyes never left the abyss of that barrel, as she calmly said no, she was fine.

I was 12, but I was no fool. This was beyond me. I calmly rose my bike back to the house, called 911, calmly gave them my address & fire number, and politely asked them to please send someone to try & stop this girl from killing herself in front of my house. I then went outside with the dog & we played in the yard while I listened for sirens & a gun shot (I was a Boy Scout, & 1st Aid was my first Merit Badge, I had the 1st Aid kit sitting on the porch – if she shot herself before the police got there, I figured I could try to do something at that point).

I heard the sirens first. In the Wisconsin country, you can hear sirens for miles. They were there, in the distance. I remember thinking, if they don’t shut those off soon, she’s gonna hear them & shoot herself. I saw an old couple pull alongside the girl, and then drive away quickly, horror etched on their faces. The sirens stopped. I knew exactly where the Sheriff deputy was, just behind the top of the hill my house was at the bottom off. Had he crested the hill with the sirens on, the sound would have filled the valley. Smart guy, that deputy.

The cruiser came screaming down the hill, and when he was a bare quarter mile from the house, I heard the loud pop. I took the dog inside, & we watched TV.

I have never been a person who feels the need to watch what first responders are doing. I always figure they are busy enough without a bunch of rubberneckers gumming up the works. If it’s important, I’ll hear about it later.

And I did. Two months later, a blue Camaro (80’s style) pulled into my driveway. The beautiful young woman who stepped out of that car, I almost didn’t recognize. She introduced herself, although I forget her name, & she asked if I was the boy who called the police for her 2 months ago. I said yes. Then she apologized for putting me through that, and thanked me. Both things I had never expected to hear, because I had no idea if she’d survived the gun shot. I remembered my manners & asked if she would like something to drink, or an ice cream drumstick. She smiled, a wonderful smile, and said no. Then she did the strangest thing (at least, to my 12 year old self, it was strange), she told me why she did it.

A common story, about a girl turning 18 soon, uncertain about her future, whose love of her short life had just dumped her before heading off to seek his fortune. For some reason, this was too much, & she stole her fathers, or maybe it was her step-fathers, gun, and his car, and found somewhere quiet to kill herself. Seems several people drove past, but I was the one who called for help. The appearance of the deputy’s cruiser startled her, and she jerked the trigger. Gave herself a nice clean hole through her lung. The deputy was able to plug the sucking chest wound until the EMTs arrived. She spent a couple days in the hospital, and then a couple months in a different hospital, and she was feeling much better now, & very grateful I had called for help.

I never saw her again. I hope she found love, & happiness, & somewhere she is out there having a great life.Report

That’s a powerful bit of writing. I really don’t know what to say. I’m sorry for your loss. And I’m sorry for the life of a young man cut short. I understand all to well the type of questioning that goes on when someone close to you dies, and you wonder if it might have been preventable. Death is often so senseless, and I have more questions than answers. I hope you find peace.Report

Religious Institutions. Religious institutions may resume services subject to the following conditions, which apply to churches, synagogues, temples, mosques, interfaith centers, and any other space, including rented space, where religious or faith gatherings are held: 1. Indoor religious gatherings are limited to no more than ten people. 2. Outdoor religious gatherings of up to 250 people are allowed. Outdoor services may be held on any outdoor space the religious institution owns, rents, or reserves for use. 3. All attendees at either indoor or outdoor services must maintain appropriate social distancing of six feet and wear face masks or facial coverings at all times. 4. There shall be no consumption of food or beverage of any kind before, during, or after religious services, including food or beverage that would typically be consumed as part of a religious service. 5. Collection plates or receptacles may not be passed to or between attendees. 6. There should be no hand shaking or other physical contact between congregants before, during, or after religious services. Attendees shall not congregate with other attendees on the property where religious services are being held before or after services. Family members or those who live in the same household or who attend a service together in the same vehicle may be closer than six feet apart but shall remain at least six feet apart from any other persons or family groups. 7. Singing is permitted, but not recommended. If singing takes place, only the choir or religious leaders may sing. Any person singing without a mask or facial covering must maintain a 12-foot distance from other persons, including religious leaders, other singers, or the congregation. 8. Outdoor or drive-in services may be conducted with attendees remaining in their vehicles. If utilizing parking lots for either holding for religious services or for parking for services held elsewhere on the premises, religious institutions shall ensure there is adequate parking available. 9. All high touch areas, (including benches, chairs, etc.) must be cleaned and decontaminated after every service. 10. Religious institutions are encouraged to follow the guidelines issued by Governor Hogan.

“There shall be no consumption of food or beverage of any kind before, during, or after religious services, including food or beverage that would typically be consumed as part of a religious service,” the order says in a section delineating norms and restrictions on religious services.

The consumption of the consecrated species at Mass, at least by the celebrant, is an integral part of the Eucharistic rite. Rules prohibiting even the celebrating priest from receiving the Eucharist would ban the licit celebration of Mass by any priest.

CNA asked the Howard County public affairs office to comment on how the rule aligns with First Amendment religious freedom and free exercise rights.

Howard County spokesman Scott Peterson told CNA in a statement that "Howard County has not fully implemented Phase 1 of Reopening. We continue to do an incremental rollout based on health and safety guidelines, analysis of data and metrics specific to Howard County and in consultation with our local Health Department."

"With this said," Peterson added, "we continue to get stakeholder feedback in order to fully reopen to Phase 1."

The executive order also limits attendance at indoor worship spaces to 10 people or fewer, limits outdoor services to 250 socially-distanced people wearing masks, forbids the passing of collection plates, and bans handshakes and physical contact between worshippers.

In contrast to the 10-person limit for churches, establishments listed in the order that do not host religious services are permitted to operate at 50% capacity.

In the early days of the Coronavirus epidemic, there were hopes that the disease could be treated with a compound called hydroxychloroquine (HCQ). HCQ is a long-established inexpensive medicine that is widely used to treat malaria. It also has uses for treating rheumatoid arthritis and lupus. There had been some indications that HCQ could treat SARS virus infections by attacking the spike proteins that coronaviruses use to latch onto cells and inject their genetic material. Initial small-scale studies of the drug on COVID-19 patients indicated some positive effect (in combination with the antibiotic azithromycin). President Trump, in March, promoted HCQ as a game-changer and is apparently taking it as a prophylaxis after potentially being exposed by White House staff.

Initial claims of the efficacy of this therapy were a perfect illustration of why we base decisions on scientific studies and not anecdotes. By late March, Twitter was filled with stories of "my cousin's mother's former roommate was on death's door and took this therapy and miraculously recovered". But such stories, even assuming they are true, mean nothing. With COVID-19, we know that seriously ill people reach an inflection point where they either recover or die. If they died while taking the HCQ regimen, we don't hear from them because...they died. And if they recover without taking it, we don't hear from them because...they didn't take it. Our simian brains have evolved to think that correlation is causation. But it isn't. If I sacrificed a goat in every COVID-19 patient's room, some of them would recover just by chance. That doesn't mean we should start a massive holocaust of caprines.

However, even putting aside anecdotes, there were good reasons to believe the HCQ regimen might work. And given the seriousness of this disease and the desperation of those trying to save lives, it's understandable that doctors began using it for critically ill patients and scientists began researching its efficacy.

Why Trump became fixated on it is equally understandable. Trump has been looking for a quick fix to this crisis since Day One. Denial failed. Closing off (some) travel to China failed. A vaccine is months if not years away. So HCQ offered him what he wanted -- a way to fix this problem without the hard work, tough choices and sacrifice of stay-at-home orders, masks, isolation and quarantine. So eager were they to adopt the quick fix, the Administration made plans to distribute millions of doses of this unproven drug in lieu of taking more concrete steps to address the crisis.[efn_note]Although the claim that Trump stands to profit off HCQ sales does not appear to hold much water.[/efn_note]

This is also why certain fringe corners of the internet became fixated on it. There has arisen a subset of the COVID Truthers that I'm calling HCQ Truthers: people who believe that HCQ isn't just something that may save some lives but is, in fact, a miracle cure that it's only being held back so that...well, take your pick. So that Democrats can wreck the economy. So that Bill Gates can inject us with tracking devices. So that we can clear off the Social Security rolls. And this isn't just a US phenomenon nor is it all about Trump. Overseas friends tell me that COVID trutherism in general and HCQ trutherism in particular have arisen all over the Western World.

It's no accident that the HCQ Truthers seem to share a great deal of headspace with the anti-Vaxxers. It fills the same needs

In both cases, the idea was started by flawed studies. The initial studies out of China and France that indicated HCQ worked were heavily criticized for methodological errors (although note that neither claimed it was a miracle cure). Since then, larger studies have shown no effect.

HCQ trutherism offers an explanation for tragedy beyond the random cruelty of nature. Just as anti-vaxxers don't want to believe that sometimes autism just happens, HCQ Truthers don't want to believe that sometimes nature just releases awful epidemics on us. It's more comforting, in some ways, to think that bad happenings are all part of a plan by shadowy forces.

There is, however, another crazy side that doesn't get as much attention because their crazy is a bit more subtle. These are the people who have decided that, since Trump is touting the HCQ treatment, it must not work. It can not work. It can not be allowed to work. There is an undisguised glee when studies show that HCQ does not work and a willingness to blame HCQ shortages on Trump and only Trump.[efn_note]Not to mention the odd fish tank cleaner poisoning that has nothing to do with him.[/efn_note]

In between the two camps are everyone else: scientists, doctors and ordinary folk who just want to know whether this thing works or not, politics and conspiracy theories be damned. Well, last week, we got a big indication that it does not. A massive study out of the Lancet concluded that the HCQ regimen has no measurable positive effect. In fact, death rates were higher for those who took the regimen, likely due to heart arrhythmias induced by the drug.

So is the debate over? Can we move on from HCQ? Not quite.

First of all, the study is a retrospective study, looking backward at nearly 100,000 cases over the last four months. That's a massive sample that allows one to correct for potential confounding factors. But it's not a double-blind trial, so there may be certain biases that can not be avoided. In response to the publication, a group doing a controlled study unblinded some of their data (that is, they let an independent group look up who was getting the actual HCQ and who was getting a placebo). It did not show enough of a safety concern to warrant ending the study.

It's also worth noting that because this is an unproven therapy, it is usually being used on only the sickest patients (the odd President of the United States aside). It's possible earlier use of the drug, when the body is not already at war with itself, could help.

With those caveats in mind, however, this study at least makes it clear that HCQ is not the miracle cure some fringe corners of the internet are pretending it is. And it should make doctors hesitant in giving to people who already have heart issues.

As you can imagine, this has only fed the twin camps of derangement. The truther arguments tend to fall into the usual holes that truther theories do:

"How can this be a four-month study when we only learned about COVID in January!" The HCQ protocol started being used almost immediately because of previous research on coronaviruses.

"How come all of the sudden this safe medicine that people use all the time is dangerous?!" The side effects of HCQ have been well known for years and have always required consideration and management. They may be showing up more strongly here because it is being given to patients whose bodies are already under extreme stress. Also, azithromycin may amplify some of those side effects.

"They just hate Trump." Not everything is about Donald Trump. If it turned out that kissing Donald Trump's giant orange backside cured COVID, scientists would be the first ones telling people to line up and use chapstick.

The other camp's response has ranged from undisguised glee -- that is, joy at the idea that we won't be saving lives cheaply -- to bizarre claims that Trump should be charged with crimes for touting this unproven therapy.

(A perfect illustration of the dementia: former FDA Head Scott Gottlieb -- who has been a Godsend for objective analysis during the pandemic -- tweeted out the results of the RECOVERY unblinding yesterday morning and noted that it showed no increased safety risk. He was immediately dogpiled by one side insisting he was trying to conceal the miracle cure of HCQ and the other insisting he is a Trumpist doing the Orange Man's dirty work.)

In the end, the lunatics do not matter. Whether HCQ works or not, whether it is used or not, will be mostly determined by doctors and will mostly be based on the evidence we have in front of us. If HCQ fails -- and it's not looking good -- my only response will be massive disappointment. Had HCQ worked, it would have been a gift from the heavens. It is a well-known, well-studied drug that can be manufactured cheaply in bulk. Had it worked, we could have saved thousands of lives, prevented hundreds of thousands of long-term injuries and saved trillions of dollars. That it doesn't appear to work -- certainly not miraculously -- is not entirely unexpected but is also a tragedy.

{C1} The Christian Science Monitor looks at 1918 and how sports handled that pandemic, and the role it played in giving rise to college football.

"That's really what started the big boom of college football in the 1920s," said Jeremy Swick, historian at the College Football Hall of Fame. "People were ready. They were back from war. They wanted to play football again. There weren't as many restrictions about going out. You could enroll back in school pretty easily. You see a great level of talent come back into the atmosphere. There's new money. It started to get to the roar of the Roaring '20s and that's when you see the stadiums arm race. Who can build the biggest and baddest stadium?"

{C2} During times of rapid change, social science is supposed to be able to help lead the way or at least decipher what is going on. Or maybe not...

But while Willer, Van Bavel, and their colleagues were putting together their paper, another team of researchers put together their own, entirely opposite, call to arms: a plea, in the face of an avalanche of behavioral science research on COVID-19, for psychology researchers to have some humility. This paper—currently published online in draft format and seeding avid debates on social media—argues that much of psychological research is nowhere near the point of being ready to help in a crisis. Instead, it sketches out an “evidence readiness” framework to help people determine when the field will be.

{C3} There is a related story about AI - which is predisposed towards tracking slow change over time - is having trouble keeping up.

{C4} The Covid-19 does not bode well for higher education is not news. They may have a lot of difficulty opening up (and maybe shouldn't). An added wrinkle is kids taking a gap year, which is potentially a problem because those most able to pay may be least likely to attend.

{C5} People who can see the faults with abstinence only education fail to see how that logic (We shouldn't give guidance to people doing things we would rather they not do in the first place). Emily Oster argues that the extreme message of public health advocates to Just Stay Home is counterproductive.

When people are advised that one very difficult behavior is safe, and (implicitly or not) that everything else is risky, they may crack under the pressure, or throw up their hands. That is, if people think all activities (other than staying home) are equally risky, they figure they might as well do those that are more fun. If taking a walk at a six-foot distance from a friend puts me at very high risk, why not just have that friend and a bunch of others over for a barbecue? It’s more fun. This is an exaggeration, of course, but different activities carry very different risks, and conscientious civic leaders should actively help people choose among them.

{C6} A look at what canceling the football season will do to the little guys - non-power schools. Ironically, they may sustain less damage due to fewer financial obligations relying on the money that won't be coming in. Be that as it may, Fordham has disestablished its baseball program.

{C7} Bans on evictions and rental spikes could have the main effect of simply pushing out small investors, rather than protecting renters. In a more good-faith economy this would be less of an issue because landlords would work with tenants. Which some are, though I don't have too much faith about it being widespread.

{C8} Three cheers for Nick Saban. Football coaches are cultural leaders of a sort. One is about to become a senator in Alabama, even. What they do matters.

The American college experience for better or for worse revolves around the residency factor. We have turned college into a relatively safe place for young adults to the test the limits of freedom without suffering too many consequences. Better to miss a day of classes because you drank too much than to miss a day of an apprenticeship or job and get fired. College was cut short this semester because of COVID and colleges are freaking out about whether they can open up dorms in the fall. The dorms are big money makers and it is hard to justify huge tuition bucks for zoom lectures even for elite universities. Maybe especially for them. California State University announced that Fall 2020 is going to be largely online. My undergrad alma mater sent out an e-mail blast announcing their plan to reopen in the fall with "mostly" in person classes. The President admitted that the plan was a work in progress but it strikes me as a combination of common sense and extreme wishful thinking. The plan may include:

1. Staggered drop-off days to limit density as we return.

This sounds reasonable but only in a temporary way because eventually everyone will be back on campus, living in dorm rooms together, needing to use communal bathrooms and showers.

2. Students would be tested for COVID-19 on campus at least twice in the first 14 days.

There is nothing wrong with this as long as the testing is available. Our capacity for testing so far in this country has not been great.

3. Anyone experiencing symptoms would be tested immediately. Students who test positive would be cared for in a separate dormitory area where food would be brought to the room and where the student could still access classes remotely.

Nothing wrong here. Outbreaks of certain diseases are not unknown in the college setting. During my senior year, there was an outbreak of a rather nasty strain of gastroenteritis. Other universities have experienced meningitis outbreaks.

4. All students would take their temperature and report symptoms daily.

This one is also reasonable but is going to involve spying on students and coming up with a punishment mechanism. How will they make sure students are not lying?

5. We would also require that socializing be kept to a minimum in the beginning, with proper PPE (masks) and social distancing. As time went on, we would seek to open up more, and students could socialize and eat together in small groups.

I have no idea how they tend for this to happen and it sets of all my lawyer bells for carefully crafted language that attempts to answer a concern or question but also admits "we got nothing." Maybe today's students are more somber and sincere but you are going to have around 500 eighteen year olds who are away from their parents for the first time and another 1500 nineteen to twenty-one year olds who had their semester rudely interrupted and might now be reunited with boyfriends and girlfriends. Are they going to assign eating times for the dining hall and put up solo eating cubicles that get wiped down and disinfected after each use? Assign times to use laundry facilities in each dorm? Cancel the clubs? Cancel performances by the theatre, dance, and music departments?

I am sympathetic to my alma I love it but and realize that a lot of colleges and universities would take a real hit financially without residency. This includes universities with reasonable to very large endowments. Only the ones with hedge fund size endowments would not suffer but the last part of the plain sounds not fully thought out yet even if my college's current President admitted: "Life on campus will not look the same as it did pre-pandemic" The only way i see number 5 working is if requiring is read as "requiring."

Seems that the theory that Covid-19 can be spread by asymptomatic people has very shaky evidence in support of it. Turns out the case this assumption was made from was based on a single woman who infected 4 others. Researchers talked to the 4 patients, and they all said the patient 0 did not appear ill, but they could not speak to patient 0 at the time.

So they finally got to talk to her, and she said she was feeling ill, but powered through with the aid of modern pharmaceuticals.

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Today we couldn’t be happier to announce that Vox Media and New York Media are merging to create the leading independent modern media company. Our combined business will be called Vox Media and will serve hundreds of millions of audience members wherever they prefer to enjoy our work.

In a nation in turmoil, it's nice to have even a small bit of good news:

Representative Steve King of Iowa, the nine-term Republican with a history of racist comments who only recently became a party pariah, lost his bid for renomination early Wednesday, one of the biggest defeats of the 2020 primary season in any state.

In a five-way primary, Mr. King was defeated by Randy Feenstra, a state senator, who had the backing of mainstream state and national Republicans who found Mr. King an embarrassment and, crucially, a threat to a safe Republican seat if he were on the ballot in November.

The defeat was most likely the final political blow to one of the nation’s most divisive elected officials, whose insults of undocumented immigrants foretold the messaging of President Trump, and whose flirtations with extremism led him far from rural Iowa, to meetings with anti-Muslim crusaders in Europe and an endorsement of a Toronto mayoral candidate with neo-Nazi ties.

King, you may remember, was stripped of his committee assignments last year when he defended white supremacism. Two years ago, he almost lost his Congressional seat in the general. That is, a seat that Republicans have held since 1986, usually win by double digits and a district Trump carried by a whopping 27 points almost came within a point or two of voting in a Democrat. That's how repulsive King had gotten.

Good riddance to bad rubbish. Enjoy retirement, Congressman. Oops. Sorry. In January, it will be former Congressman.

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From the Daily Mail: Deadliest city in America plans to disband its entire police force and fire 270 cops to deal with budget crunch

The deadliest city in America is disbanding its entire police force and firing 270 cops in an effort to deal with a massive budget crunch.

...

The police union says the force, which will not be unionized, is simply a union-busting move that is meant to get out of contracts with current employees. Any city officers that are hired to the county force will lose the benefits they had on the unionized force.

Oak Park police say they are investigating “suspicious circumstances” after two attorneys — including one who served as a hearing officer in several high-profile Chicago police misconduct cases — were found dead in their home in the western suburb Monday night.

Officers were called about 7:30 p.m. for a well-being check inside a home in the 500 block of Fair Oaks Avenue, near Chicago Avenue, and found the couple dead inside, Oak Park spokesman David Powers said in an emailed statement. Authorities later identified them as Thomas E. Johnson, 69, and Leslie Ann Jones, 67, husband and wife attorneys who worked in Chicago.

The preliminary report from an independent autopsy ordered by George Floyd's family says the 46 year old man's death was "caused by asphyxia due to neck and back compression that led to a lack of blood flow to the brain".

The independent examiners found that weight on the back, handcuffs and positioning were contributory factors because they impaired the ability of Floyd's diaphragm to function, according to the report.

Dr. Michael Baden and the University of Michigan Medical School's director of autopsy and forensic services, Dr. Allecia Wilson, handled the examination, according to family attorney Ben Crump.

Baden, who was New York's medical examiner in 1978 and 1979, had previously performed independent autopsies on Eric Garner, who was killed by a police officer in Staten Island, New York, in 2014 and Michael Brown, who was shot by officers in Ferguson, Missouri, that same year.

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Oddly, the video was dropped by an attorney friend the men, because he thought it would exonerate them. He assumed when people saw Aubrey turn and try to defend himself, everyone would see what they did: a dangerous animal needing to be put down.